This new CD, produced by Glen Roven, was released in May 2018, and features all contemporary compositions by Benjamin Boyle, Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, Glen Roven and myself. These are performed by these extraordinary artists: baritones Tobias Greenhalgh, Steven LaBrie and Jarrett Ott, and pianists Michael Brofman, Adam Nielsen, Glen Roven and Danny Zelibor.
My contribution is a new baritone version of my song cycle The Joy of Uncreating, written to poems by the late Joan Joffe Hall. Voix des Arts writes: “The interpretive symbiosis with which LaBrie and Nielsen ignite Boyle’s songs proves to be no less incendiary in their performance of Lori Laitman’s The Joy of Uncreating. Not unlike the textual integrity of her operatic setting of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the composer’s uses of Joan Joffe Hall’s words in the songs on this disc are strikingly perceptive, her music dissecting the heart of the words with a tonal scalpel that pares away artifice. LaBrie and Nielsen cut into the flesh of ‘Illumination’ with unhesitant strokes, piercing the song’s torso with a gleaming blade sharpened on the backs of the words. Here and in ‘The Joy of Uncreating,’ they navigate the music’s paths through the texts with magnetic expressive dexterity.”
The complete review can be found here. To purchase the CD, please click here.
